John Dragoon’s Blog

“Twitter is so lame”

So says one particular 15 year old quoted in a February 4, 2010 USA Today article outlining how teens and young adults are using social media these days. Apparently, teenagers, who have a history of being early adopters on nearly every online activity are not so keen on Twitter.

It’s my job to explore all avenues for marketing effectiveness and the world of social media is perhaps the hottest area for exploration among the Chief Marketing Officers I know. But this survey, with particular emphasis on the less than enthusiastic uptake on Twitter with tomorrow’s decision makers, is giving me reason to pause and ask “Is Twitter the CB Radio of social media?” Perhaps an explanation is in order.

CB Radio. I suspect I date myself. Come back to the 1970’s when CB (citizens band) radio was all the rage. CB radio was a way to connect with complete strangers or friends with a reasonable investment and no variable cost to participation. And like Twitter, the value of CB radio was exponential to the number of devices in use. CB radio aficionados were enthusiastic defenders of the medium. Heck they even had their own language, lingo and “handles”. Handles – names they called themselves that protected their anonymity (in a time when protecting one’s privacy seemed to matter – but that’s another blog). CB ”handles” were the equivalent of Twitter ids. The point is there was a period in the 70’s that if you didn’t have a CB radio, you weren’t part of the conversation. But alas, CB radio never reached the promise or potential of its supporters and today it’s a pop culture item and answer to a trivial pursuit question.

Is Twitter heading in the same direction as CB radio? If teenagers have anything to say about it I suspect so. In truth, I’m not yet convinced that Twitter is going to make it either. I may take some criticism for that but from my seat the most prolific users of Twitter today are egotists or marketers – sometimes these are the same people. Yes I use Twitter and encourage my team and company to use it as well. But unless the use broadens and companies begin to understand the linkage between using Twitter (and other social media avenues for that matter) and delivering a better customer experience, I suspect we’ll all move on to the next big thing. After all, who wants to be using something that today’s youth view as “lame”.

John

Late last October I wrote a guest column for Forbes.com on “The Battle of the OS Titans” in which I described the complex and evolving landscape of operating system battles and how ultimately, we as consumers would be the real winners.  Apple’s much anticipated and highly hyped launch of their latest computing form factor – the Apple iPad, serves as the latest example of what it will truly take to win the Operating System battle.

As I wrote last October, “applications and usability drive operating system selection”.  And so it appears with the iPad.  This is a formula Apple understand all too well.  Clearly leveraging the success of the iPhone and iTouch, iPad (with uneven technical reviews at best) wants to be your next must have computing device because it offers a superior user experience and has every application you could ever possible want, if not need.   We’ll have to wait and see (perhaps not too long) to assess whether Apple has yet another hit on their hands.  In the meantime, if the formula for operating systems success is so simple:  Usability + Applications = Really successful Operating System, why don’t more vendors get it and more specifically, what does it portend for the future of Linux – particularly on the desktop.  The answer to the first part of the question is “because It’s hard”.   I remain more optimistic about the second part of the question.

In the wake of Apple’s iPad announcement, Brett Waldman, an IDC research analyst, wrote an interesting note titled “Could the Success of the Apple iPad Finally Lead to the Growth of Linux on the Desktop?”  Copyright restrictions don’t allow me to link to the actual January 29, 2010 article.   Brett submits that for “…Linux to gain market share in the newly revitalized tablet market, it will have to learn the lessons of Apple and go after it with a mobile UI, like the ones found on Google’s Android or the Moblin project.”  He also suggests Linux will have to overcome one more obstacle: applications.   I agree with Brett on both points and think Linux is making decent strides, with the help of many vendors and open source contributors, to both.  The question is can Linux proceed fast enough and with enough broad market support and adoption to be the force it can and should be.  To some, time is running out

There’s been tremendous improvement in the last twelve months alone on user interfaces (see Android and Moblin).  We must continue to win the hearts and minds of developers and independent software vendors so that Linux has an equally compelling applications story.  Novell’s SUSE Studio and recently announced SUSE Appliance Toolkit are squarely aimed at helping solve this application issue.

I believe Linux is the ideal operating system for creating and delivering  the “Platform Specific User Experience”.  The market, however, is moving rapidly and we must focus on the magic formula for success if reality is to match the vision.

John

This week Gartner announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Burton Group for $56M. The news came fast on the heels of Gartner’s acquisition of AMR which it only completed at the end of December last year. Reaction to the announcement has largely focused on the accelerating trend toward consolidation in the IT analyst marketplace. While this is important, I see this news as having a different significance.

Although Burton Group is a well-diversified company that covers many technologies, it is best known for its considerable expertise in the identity and security management markets. As a leader in this space Novell has enjoyed a long relationship with Burton Group and have benefited from their advice and their support.

I believe the acquisition is a significant move by Gartner because it clearly signals the strategic importance of identity and security management in the company’s overall portfolio of advisory services. Identity and security have long been a top-line priority for CIOs and CTOs, and the move to virtualization and cloud computing are only accentuating these concerns. Indeed, security and identity concerns are ranked the top impediments to adopting a cloud-based infrastructure, according to CxOs at major companies polled by IDC.

In a recent blog post on identity management by Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald, he wrote:

“…as we move to virtualize and secure our next-generation data center infrastructure, security policies can’t be tied to physical attributes. Security policies must be tied to logical attributes including virtual machine identities, application identities, as well as user and group identities. All security policy enforcement points (firewalls, IPSs, web security gateways, and so on) should become identity-aware.”

We concur. Identity-awareness must be intrinsic to all IT workloads, rather than being abstracted into a management framework. Only then will organizations reap the efficiency, cost and flexibility benefits inherent in next-generation data centers that leverage virtualization and cloud computing. We’re seeing a new market emerge for intelligent workload management solutions that are identity-aware and can, as MacDonald points out, tie security policies to physical and logical attributes, as well as user and group identities.

I believe this is a good move for both companies and our industry at large.

John

Twenty two years ago then IBM CEO John Akers declared 1987 as the “Year of the Customer”.    I was into my third year of employment with IBM at the time and thought they knew far more than me about customers.   Even so, I privately wondered,  “Isn’t every year, the year of the customer?” What are we supposed to do and declare in 1988?  Say, “Well that was nice, now let’s get back to the business of internal politics and meetings.”

Of course IBM and all of us know that every year is the year of the customer.  This was particularly true in the year we all are about to complete -2009.  The customer is always setting the terms, re-writing the rules and declaring, through his and her actions, the winners and losers.  As it should be.

But 2009 was different and I think the changes are permanent.  The recession did more than just change short term attitudes and behaviors.  It was and is a catalyst for thinking very differently about the vendor – customer relationship.  Customers are as demanding as ever but what they are demanding has changed dramatically in our industry.   Innovation matters but it’s a different type of innovation customer’s now seek.

Feature / function innovation has long been the mainstay of technology companies and the primary sort key of competition for many of us.  And while many technology companies continue to innovate in this area at astounding rates, customers aren’t demanding the type of innovation they can’t consume, use or integrate into their business.   What customer’s told us in 2009 was that they wanted a different type of innovation.  Innovation around the technology business model.   Innovation around how technology is developed, sold, supported, integrated and used.  Innovation that helps them manage the cost, complexity and risk inherent in their IT environment.   Innovation that helps them leverage and extend what they have.  Innovation that delivers a more compelling customer experience.

Frankly, I find this shift in customer demands exciting.  There’s real opportunity to differentiate the customer experience based on capabilities that are not easily copied.

So yes, 2009, like every year before it and every year after it was “The Year of the Customer”.  I look forward with anticipation and optimism at addressing the challenges of the next decade as the customer continues to speak.

John

When your company brand depends on the character of one person you are playing Russian roulette with your most precious corporate asset.  When that person accurately reflects the values and positive attributes of your company, all is good.  When he or she doesn’t, you are in deep trouble.

Twelve world class companies are discovering both the rewards and risks of defining who they want you to think they are through their association with one very high profile athlete -  Tiger Woods.  The events of the last two weeks are particularly problematic for Accenture who has spent the last six years (and hundreds of millions of dollars) building and promoting their brand through their singular use of Mr. Woods as their visual and literal poster child for all Accenture advertising.   As we know by now, Accenture has had enough and this weekend they called an end to their Tiger Woods relationship.  It was not a question of if but when.

As a marketing professional, I’ve looked with envy as I’ve strolled through airports around the world and admired countless beautiful Accenture ads with Tiger Woods promoting various virtues of integrity, excellence, perseverance, etc.  Heck, what CMO wouldn’t want one of the worlds most famous athletes speaking on behalf of their brand.  Yet while the emotional side of me loves the idea, the practical side says our brand is far too important to entrust to someone else.

I have tremendous empathy for all the companies who thought they were associating themselves with someone who they assumed reflected  what they wanted others to think about themselves.  I’ve less sympathy for building one’s brand based on one well known individual.  There are numerous companies in the IT industry who define themselves through their actions and their core competencies.  Apple.  IBM,  HP. Intel.  The list goes on.  A brand is built through thousands of convesrations and impressions.  Risking all that on the behavior of one uncontrollable person is the equivalent of having your entire retirement plan based on one stock.

To be sure, Accenture, Gillette, Gatorade and the other sponsors of Mr. Woods will survive – the process of re-defining themselves starts now.  For me, I’ll stick to building Novell’s brand not through the eyes of one high profile outsider, but through the actions and intentions of thousands of customers, partners and employees.

John

Earlier today we announced our strategy and product roadmap for addressing the emerging market for intelligent workload management.  Much has and will be written about the “what” and “how” of intelligent workload management—I’d like to focus on the “why”.

Why should IT and business leaders care about intelligent workload management and why is there a growing need for solutions from this emerging market category?

Our industry is characterized by rapid change and innovation.  It’s also characterized by long technology life cycles as companies evaluate, pilot, adopt, and sunset various technologies in their constant pursuit of optimizing the cost, complexity and risk trifecta of value.  We are in the early stages of yet another technology life cycle—this one characterized not so much by technical feature / function innovation but by innovation of the computing business model and platform.  This life cycle holds great promise in helping IT leaders reduce the cost of their operations while increasing flexibility and agility.  How?   By dis-aggregating or untethering their IT workloads from the physical infrastructures required to run them—namely through the use of virtualization and emerging software, platform and infrastructure cloud computing models.

How early are we in this next life cycle?   Hasn’t virtualization been around for a while?  Every other IT article mentions the cloud—isn’t everybody already there?  While virtualization has indeed gone mainstream, recent industry studies suggest that only 16% of computing workloads are virtualized.   And while the conversation around cloud computing is hot, the use is not yet so:  Only about 1% of all computing workloads are hosted today.

So with so much promise around reduced cost and increased flexibility, what’s preventing CIO’s from moving more of their IT workloads to virtualized and cloud environments?   In a recent IDC poll of CXOs at major companies they identified three core issues and concerns mitigating their widespread adoption of these promising platforms and  business models:

• Security
• Performance / Management
• Availability

Our customers want the flexibility to be able to move workloads freely across physical, virtual and cloud environments so they can maximize efficiencies and make the most of their existing IT resources.  To do this, they tell us that workloads need to be secure, easily managed, and able to support their various company policies and compliance requirements.  In short, the workload needs to be intelligent.

As this new world of IT comes into focus, we believe there are a few simple tenets that will need to be addressed to reach the full potential of the current technology lifecycle—namely:

• The risk and challenges of computing across multiple environments must be eliminated
• Users should have unimpeded, secure and compliant access to the full computing services they need to do their jobs
• Computing should be secure, compliant and portable

To be sure, these tenets are both bold and aspirational and effectively addressing them will require broad IT ecosystem participation and cooperation.   That’s why intelligent workload management is not uniquely a Novell strategy or market—it’s a market Novell intends to lead in but it’s clearly bigger than Novell.

We believe in the powerful potential of intelligent workload management and it’s why were aligning our company around it.  Integrated stacks of applications, middleware and operating systems constitute modern workloads.  Making them intelligent, secure and portable will optimize the use of all enterprise IT resources whether within or outside the firewall.  Intelligent workloads, incorporating security, identity-awareness and demonstrable compliance are the new IT building blocks and they hold great promise in unlocking the powerful potential of the IT business models of today—and tomorrow.

With intelligent workload management, customers will be able to take advantage of the cost, flexibility and efficiencies offered by virtualization and cloud computing without having to compromise on security and control.  The new world of IT is coming into focus—and the future looks intelligent indeed.

John

With the recent release of Window’s 7 and the flurry of operating system activity over the last few months, it’s clear that choice is coming in a big way regarding pc and mobile device operating system selection.  I wrote about this in a recently posted article on forbes.com which you can find here.

While the winner on the vendor side is far from clear, it seems obvious that the consumer will win no matter what the outcome.  Let me know what you think.

John

Last December we took the difficult but correct decision to cancel Novell’s premier user and technical training conference – BrainShare.  While most of our customers, partners and employees understood and supported the decision, there was a clear demand and passion for the event to return in 2010.

It’s with great excitement that we are announcing the return of BrainShare in 2010.  Not only will BrainShare return to Salt Lake City, Utah where it’s been for more than 20 years but after a five year hiatus, we will be holding a BrainShare EMEA event as well.  Our customers told us loud and clear that they viewed BrainShare as a critical component of their overall education and training on all things Novell.  They also told us what they liked and didn’t like about the event.  Accordingly, as we bring BrainShare back, we’ll make sure it remains the best forum for technical training and education.  We’ll also assure that we and our partners offer the hands on experiences and real life case studies that help our customers get the most out of their Novell investments.

Our Salt Lake City BrainShare will take place from Sunday, March 21 through Thursday, March 25, 2010.  Our BrainShare EMEA event will take place in May, 2010 with the exact dates and location to be finalized in the coming weeks.

BrainShare is a Novell institution and an event that every Novell employee contributes to and takes pride in.  We are truly excited about the return of this marquee conference to Salt Lake City and Europe and look forward to seeing many of you next year.

John

Every year about this time I await the very comprehensive market analysis  and forecast IDC does on the worldwide Linux operating environment.  While 2009 has been a tough year for technology vendors in general, those of us in the Linux space continue to believe strongly in the value proposition and potential of this still relatively young operating system.   The question is are we blinded by our passion or do the facts speak for a Linux future as bright as its past and present?

Well, IDC just released their 2009-2013 forecast (and review) of the worldwide Linux market and there’s good news all around.  Considering that Linux revenue started at $0 a decade ago, IDC’s projections showing Linux operating systems revenue exceeding $1 billion in 2012 and continuing to grow to $1.2 billion in 2013 is big news indeed.  In 2008, the last full year of data, the Linux vendor community saw a 23.4% growth in revenue, well north of the single digit increase in operating system revenue at large.  And while Red Hat continues to have the largest share, Novell had a particularly good 2008 growing total Linux operating system revenue by 50.3% from 2007 to 2008 while growing overall market share over five points to 29.8% in 2008.

On the server side, Linux is increasingly the choice for mission critical applications.  The growth of virtualization and the importance of interoperability were both cited by IDC as critical adoption drivers for Linux.  We agree.  These factors when combined with Linux’ clear and compelling economic value proposition suggest Linux will not only weather the current economic crisis but will continue to grow at above average growth rates for years to come.

IDC rightly points out that Linux on the client side “remains the great hope…”     We agree that IT professionals are becoming increasingly comfortable with client side Linux.  We further agree that the emergence of netbooks as low cost form factors and Intel’s exciting Moblin platform (of which Novell is a key contributor and partner) provide opportunities for Linux to grow on the client side where there is ample green field opportunity and market redefinition.

All in all, the momentum for Linux continues.

John

A little over 48 hours ago we launched the SUSE Appliance Program, the first END-TO-END technology and business solution for creating and deploying fully supported software appliances.  Reaction to this announcement from the industry, press and most importantly independent software vendors and developers has been both humbling and terrific.

In fact, since the announcement, ISVs and developers have been busy. We’ve had:

- 3,198 requests for new accounts which is slightly more than 1 request a minute

- 2,711 appliance builds, 1,104 appliance builds in the last 24 hours alone

- 1,186 test drives of built appliances

Reaction from the industry and press has been equally encouraging such as:

“It may be the most important thing Novell has done for software shops in decades” from Dana Blankenhors at ZDNET

and

“…Novell’s SUSE Appliance Program arguably tackles one of the hardest problems in Linux, and delivers a truly easy experience…”from Matt Asay at CNET

and

“Novell’s SUSE Studio…outshines similar services….with its ease of use and tight integration…” from Jason Brooks review in eWeek

But alas, we are just getting started.   Novell’s Chief Technology Officer of Linux and Open Source, Nat Friedman, just launched a fascinating series of blog posts on SUSE Studio and software appliances which you can find here.

Changing the software delivery model and the software experience.  That’s what SUSE Studio is about and the reception so far seems to indicate thousands agree.

John